


The Hero of My Own Life: Five Things That Never Happened to Nymphadora Tonks

by azephirin



Series: Dean/Tonks 'verse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling, Supernatural
Genre: 10000-30000 words, 5 Things, Alternate Canon, Autumn, Bisexual Character, California, Crossover, Cunnilingus, Dancing, Female Friendship, Fingerfucking, Flirting, Multi, Queer Themes, Unrequited Love, Werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:14:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hero of My Own Life: Five Things That Never Happened to Nymphadora Tonks

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. (He's my nineteenth-century literary baby-daddy. Don't be hatin'.)

She wakes to a hand over her mouth, weight holding her down. She won't panic. She won't. She pulls in breath, gathers her strength to fight—and then there's the familiar scent of the only girl Tonks knows who wears men's cologne. It's citrusy, not too strong. It smells good. Tonks's muscles begin to unknot as Ilana murmurs a silencing charm. It won't do to disturb her roommates any more than Ilana already has.

Charm done, the hand and the weight move, and Ilana flops down by Tonks's side. "Miss me?"

"You have more nerve than anyone I know!"

"Like any idiot would stay in those damp old dungeons when she could be in bed with you. Shove over."

"You're already taking up half the bed!"

"Then maybe you ought to come over here."

Tonks laughs as they wrap around each other. She reaches down and settles Ilana's leg over her hip, runs her hand up Ilana's thigh, up the length of her side, finally rests on the back of her neck. Ilana Trafford—cheeky, short-haired, tall, fit from her duties as a Chaser. Unrepentantly lesbian, heir to a railroading fortune, the first Muggle-born Slytherin in more than a century. Girlfriend to Nymphadora Tonks.

"How was your family?" Tonks ventures.

She can feel Ilana's shrug, know without needing to see that it's deceptively light, careless. "They were themselves. Much as one might expect them to be."

"Did they—"

Ilana cuts her off not even midsentence, with a kiss. "They were dead boring," she says. "I can think of a million more interesting things we can talk about." She kisses Tonks again, rolls them over so that Ilana's on top, nudges a leg between Tonks's. "I can think of a million more interesting things we can do."

"A million? You haven't even shown me a hundred."

"Time, love, give it time." She tangles her hands in Tonks's hair, kisses her again. Tonks's hands find their way to Ilana's back. She's still dressed: a Muggle oxford shirt, judging from the fabric, and jeans. She dresses like a boy, but carefully, her shirts crisply ironed, her trousers sharply creased. Even her jeans appear tailored to her long, lean frame.

Tonks likes mussing her up.

She pulls the tails of Ilana's shirt from the waistband of the jeans, slides her hands up onto Ilana's back. "Don't be coy," Ilana says. "Just take it off me."

"I can't exactly reach the buttons."

Ilana sits up and Tonks does too, putting Ilana squarely in her lap. Tonks unfastens the buttons one by one, exposing bare skin—Ilana's flat-chested enough to be comfortable without a brassiere, and she hates them besides. Tonks pushes her onto her back, licks the pebbles of her nipples until she's gasping, hands tight again in Tonks's hair. Tonks moves down farther: to unbutton the fly of her jeans.

Ilana's right: They've been together too long to be coy. They were friends for several years: Both top of their classes in Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts. Both slightly off from the average: a shapeshifter (as certain people like to call Tonks), a Mudblood Slytherin. Both inspiring questioning and distrust from their respective houses simply because they liked each other.

And then last fall things took a different turn, and now it's April, and Ilana's going to be naked in Tonks's bed in just a minute, and Tonks doesn't think she's ever loved someone so much in her life.

They pull Ilana's jeans down and off; her knickers follow shortly. Tonks lets her fingers wander down Ilana's body, over her ribcage, past her navel, through the soft hair and across her slick, hot secret places. Ilana arches and gasps when two of Tonks's fingers brush over her clit. She reaches for Tonks—and then makes a face. "All these clothes. Why are they still on?"

"Why don't you help me remedy that?"

Tonks manages to entangle herself in the T-shirt she sleeps in; Ilana helps her out of it, and then out of her flannel pyjama bottoms. Ilana rolls and pins her again, and there's the sudden intensity of bare skin against bare skin—they've done too many times to count, but that part feels new on every one. Ilana presses a hard, sucking kiss to the base of Tonks's throat; she knows it'll leave a mark, that she'll have to choose her robes carefully in the morning.

Ilana keeps her fingers around Tonks's wrists as she moves, pausing to give attention to Tonks's breasts, licking delicately at them as Tonks sighs happily. But she moves on: down Tonks's belly to circle her tongue around her navel, over to lick the points of her hips, moving slowly, teasingly. When Ilana licks a careful line over Tonks's clit, she can't help the little cry that escapes. She bites her lip, muffles it by habit, even as she remembers Ilana doing the silencing charms.

"Let...oh, God, Ilana...let me up...Oh, God, like that!"

She can see the gleam of Ilana's eyes as Ilana looks up. "You really want me to?"

"I want—ah!" as Ilana returns to what she was doing. "I want to touch you."

Ilana lets her hands go, and Tonks runs them over her soft hair. It comes down just past her ears, but—much to Mrs. Trafford's dismay, Tonks is sure—it doesn't make Ilana any more feminine; it just gives Tonks a place to put her fingers when Ilana is doing this to her.

Ilana starts using her own fingers, then, and any rational thought Tonks might have had is utterly destroyed. Her world is centered on where Ilana is kissing the most private place on her body, on her fingers as they crook up and touch something on the inside that makes Tonks scream. She takes her hands off Ilana's head—she has that much presence of mind—and then Ilana twists her fingers and Tonks is coming, shouting her name, hands clenched in the sheets.

She collapses back and pulls Ilana up with her, pulls Ilana down to kiss her, messily, tasting herself on Ilana's lips and tongue. Then she flips them both over, props herself up on an elbow, kisses Ilana as she touches her, strokes her, until Ilana's arching against her fingers, moaning into her mouth. Tonks can feel Ilana's climax—the tightening of her pussy and the flood of wetness—but she doesn't stop until Ilana has done it again.

After, Tonks gathers Ilana up against her; kisses her forehead, her eyelids, her temples; traces Ilana's spine with her fingers, gentle and light. Ilana gets weirdly shaky after sex, and despite how long and how well they've known each other, Tonks has never found out why. She has some ideas, but nothing definite, and so she does this, holding Ilana and her mystery and her checked strength until she's back to herself, or until she falls asleep.

Tonks is drowsing when Ilana, out of the dark, says, "They want me to marry Henry Douglas."

"Is that the earl?"

"Heir to the earldom. His father squandered the fortune gambling, but they've still got the title." Ilana spreads her hand on Tonks's belly. "My money, his title. That's what they want."

"It's not the Middle Ages," Tonks says. "They understand that you can say no, right?"

"Theoretically." Ilana shifts then, moves so that she's looking down at Tonks, eyes intent even in the near-blackness. "I got a letter from my aunt Elizabeth early this morning, before McGonagall took me up to the gates." It's next to unheard-of for students to go off-campus except on the Hogsmeade trips, but Ilana's family had come to Edinburgh and demanded to see her; Professor McGonagall had escorted her just outside the Hogwarts gates, and she'd Apparated to meet them at their posh hotel in the city. It hadn't been a visit, not really, not like when Tonks goes home on holidays and her mother fusses about her hair color and she plays chess with her father. This was a meeting, devoted entirely to the subject of Henry Douglas.

"How's Aunt Elizabeth?" Tonks asks.

"She's fine. She said..." Ilana takes a breath, and Tonks can't imagine what Elizabeth might have said—Ilana so rarely hesitates about anything. Elizabeth is Ilana's mother's sister who lives in America; she's mostly estranged from the family for the simple and stupid reason that she's a lesbian. "She talked to Kezia, and they...they have a second bedroom. They mostly use it as an office now, but she said...I could come there. Go to Boston and live with them. And she said...she said you could come, too."

This is far too much to digest so quickly, and what comes out of Tonks's mouth is, "To Boston?"

"There are a lot of gay people there." Tonks has to translate the Muggle slang; they use _gay_ to mean _homosexual_ rather than _happy_. "People don't much care. And it's a beautiful city, right on the ocean. Cold, but we're used to that up here in Scotland, right?"

"To Boston?" Tonks repeats.

"To Boston."

"I...Ilana...Boston?"

"People don't care there, Adora."

She's Nymphadora to her teachers, Dora to her parents, Tonks to her friends. Ilana is the only person in the world who calls her Adora.

"People don't care here."

"No. They just look the other way, or suck it in because we can hex them into oblivion."

"But we wouldn't."

"_You_ wouldn't. Why do you think Peter Parkinson was in the infirmary with flippers instead of feet?"

"That was you?!"

Tonks feels another shrug, this one as false as the first. "You say something like that without the stones to back it up, you deserve what's coming to you."

Tonks forgets sometimes that Ilana was Sorted into Slytherin for a reason.

"What about applying to be an Auror?" Tonks says. "We talked about that. For both of us."

Ilana sighs and lays herself down on top of Tonks. From this angle, Tonks can see only the top of her head. "They'll never take me."

"You have top marks in everything. You're sure to take more than enough NEWTS."

"Yes, of course." She doesn't say it arrogantly; it's just true. "But first, they'll never take a Slytherin, and second, even if they were for some reason to change that unwritten but nevertheless inflexible rule, they'd never take me."

"But—"

"Adora, I hexed someone with invertebrate body parts simply because he called me something my father says to me just about every night at supper. In the war, they let Aurors use Unforgivables. I don't think I'm the prime candidate for someone who should have open authority to use the Killing Curse."

"But you wouldn't," Tonks says.

"I wouldn't have thought I'd blast Parkinson with a Stinging Hex and then give him flippers, either."

"Stinging Hex too?"

"You say something like that without the stones to back it up..." Ilana sighs. "That's it, right there. I don't have the character to do it, Adora. The ability, yes, but not the character."

"The war is over," Tonks persists. "They're not going to do that again, with the Unforgivables."

"It's the principle, whether or not it comes to that. And I wouldn't be so sure about the war."

"What do you mean, you wouldn't be so sure?"

"I hear things around Slytherin. Parkinson, actually, is one of the big talkers, but others too. I know everyone thinks You-Know-Who is dead, but there are a lot of people who disagree, and for pretty good reasons, as far as I can tell. I want to be well out of here before he has a chance to prove them right."

"People talk, Ilana. Especially Slytherins—no offense."

"None taken. It's true. But if You-Know-Who were going to come back, these are the people who would know. I'm Muggle-born. You're a Metamorphmagus. We're at the center of their target."

"I really don't think that's going to happen. But—and this is so bloody unlikely, I can't even say—but let's just say it happens. If You-Know-Who wants a war, we give it to him, and we get rid of him once and for all. We fight back! Don't you want to fight back, if it happens?"

"No," Ilana says. "It's not my fight. I'm not taking the Death Eaters' side—that's for certain—but if the rest of the wizarding world cared so much, why was he allowed to gather so much power in the first place? Why were so many of his followers exonerated? Why should I risk my life because people our parents' age didn't care enough to stop him the first time around?"

"If what you're saying is true," Tonks says quietly, "I won't run away from it. And, Ilana, my entire family is here. All my friends. I've never even been to America. Stay here. You know my parents like you. Stay with us."

"Have you asked them?"

"No. But I know what they'll say."

Ilana wraps her arms around Tonks's shoulders, kisses her on the mouth, buries her face in Tonks's neck, doesn't answer.

### 

II

 

"They're _Americans_," Araminta says across the table. Word about the new students has spread quickly—but, then, they're highly unusual, two orphaned American boys arriving at Hogwarts as a seventh-year and a third-year. Tonks hasn't seen them yet; they've been taken with the first-years, so they won't come in until Sorting.

Hufflepuff, happily reunited, barely shushes itself when Sorting begins—Tonks and her friends have written voluminous letters back and forth all summer, and she's been able to visit and talk to Araminta, Prudence, and Tamesis via Floo, but Pippa and Eugenie, Muggle-borns who live far away, have been reachable only by post. It's just not the same.

But Sorting starts, and it's imperative that one see who will be joining one's house for the rest of their years at Hogwarts—and, by extension, for the rest of their lives—so the Hufflepuffs quiet down. "Their last name is Winchester," whispers Araminta, who always knows everything. "They won't come until the end."

When "Winchester, Dean!" resonates through the Great Hall, there's a pause, then the sounds of a scuffle, and then a chubby boy, looking decidedly disgruntled underneath his mop of dark curls, seats himself on the stool and carefully dons the hat. His face takes on the expression of utter disbelief common to many first-years—especially those who haven't grown up in wizarding households and thus haven't been warned that a wrinkled old hat will talk to you inside your head. There's another pause as the hat, effectively, decides the course of the rest of this boy's life. After a moment, it calls decisively, "Slytherin!" and Winchester, Dean, runs over to the Slytherin table, but doesn't sit down.

The next name is "Winchester, Samuel!" and Tonks could swear that half the girls in Hufflepuff let out sighs. The Ravenclaw girls are poking each other; the Slytherins are looking less bored than usual; even the Gryffindors have lost their characteristic steadfastness and are talking in hushed voices.

Winchester, Samuel, in a leather jacket and battered jeans, is nice-looking and quite fit—that's undeniable—but Tonks hates when girls get like this. If she wants to talk to this boy, she will—and he might be a nice distraction now that Calvin has finished Hogwarts and buggered off to France and apparently declared it his life goal to shag every French girl available—and either Winchester, Samuel, will like her, or he won't. But she's not going to waste time giggling about it.

Winchester, Samuel, saunters over to the stool, sits on it and somehow manages to look as though he's sprawling casually, and jams the hat onto his head. It looks almost offended at the rough treatment—and then Winchester, Samuel, gets the classic first-year look on his face, and Tonks can't help smiling. No amount of tall, fit American bravado can prepare you for the fact that you're having a telepathic conversation with a thousand-year-old piece of clothing.

The conversation goes on for a while, and at one point Winchester, Samuel, is shaking his head emphatically—Tonks wonders what the hat's suggestion was. Finally, after several minutes of this, the hat says in a tone of what can be characterized only as resignation, "Slytherin." The expression on the younger brother's face is one of sheer relief as Winchester, Samuel, strolls over to the Slytherin table and sits down next to Winchester, Dean, in the space their new housemates make for them.

It would just figure, Tonks thinks, that the best-looking boy in school would have to be a Slytherin.

********************

 

It's a fine autumn Tuesday, mid-October and crisp, and Tonks is walking back to her room from Herbology, taking the long way to enjoy a stroll by the lake and perhaps catch a glimpse of the giant squid. She has a free period next, and she should be catching up on schoolwork, but, she tells herself, she'll do it in the evening. It's too beautiful outside now to concentrate on dusty old History of Magic.

Her contentment is disrupted considerably when she hears shouting.

Wand out, she goes to investigate. It's four against one—Jethro McNair, Gilbert Avery, Fergus Gibbon, and Wolfgang Jugson shooting hexes at a boy she recognizes as one of the Hufflepuff first-years. They're shooting at his feet—making him "dance." Oh, the wit of bullies. She breaks into a run.

She has her mouth open for a Expelliarmus, but someone else gets there first. "Hey, assholes," he says. The timbre and accent are unmistakable—Dean Winchester. (Not, as it turns out, Samuel: Rumor—or, more specifically, Araminta—has it that the older brother pushed the younger one out to be Sorted first, and then when it came to be his turn argued the hat into placing him in Slytherin too.) "Maybe you want to pick on somebody your own fucking size for the first time in your lives?"

"What the hell, Winchester," McNair says. "He's just a little Mudblood Hufflepuff firstie."

"Yeah—no. I don't have the hard-on for people's parents that you guys do, and you guys really need to step back."

The four of them turn—four on one, sixth-years and seventh-years, against someone with barely a month of training. Dean says, calmly, "Stupefy," at the same time Tonks shouts her disarming spell from fifty feet away.

It's stronger than she intended: It disarms not just the four bullies but Dean as well. Avery's unconscious, but Jugson, Gibbon, and McNair turn on Dean, clearly intending to do battle with fists since wands aren't available. McNair throws the first punch; he's taller and broader, but Dean blocks it easily and brings him to the ground with a foot in the stomach at the same time Tonks, closer now, fires a Petrificus at Gibbon and another at Jugson. Avery's out cold, Gibbon and Jugson are frozen, McNair is lying on the grass and clutching his midsection. Dean doesn't have a mark on him, and the little first-year is shaken up but unharmed. Tonks doesn't feel bad about it: McNair and his cronies are bullies and liars, and she can't help thinking they're owed a come-down.

Dean picks up his wand and looks at Tonks for the first time. "Never seen a Hufflepuff in a fight before."

"We leave the antler-locking to the Gryffindors and Slytherins." She looks at the first-year. "I'm Tonks. What's your name?"

"Iknowwhoyouare," the boy says in a hurried murmur.

"Alright, so who are you?"

He tells her.

"Do you want us to walk you back to the dormitory?"

"No. I mean, I can get there. Um, thank you. McNair hates me because he called me a Mudblood and I called him a fat pig."

She has no idea where people get the idea that Hufflepuffs don't stand up for themselves.

"He's a pig alright," Dean agrees. "And a lot of other things too. Sure you don't want us to walk you?"

The boy's probably embarrassed, Tonks thinks, and just wants to go back and hide for a bit. She can't blame him.

"Go ahead," she says. "But if any of these wankers ever bother you again, tell me."

"Or me," adds Dean.

"But they're in your house," the boy objects.

"Does it really look to you like I give a rat's ass about that?"

The boy appears to be trying with admirable but unsuccessful effort to keep from smiling.

They watch him go on his way, back towards the castle. McNair's recovering, so Tonks flicks a Petrificus at him, too. She and Dean Winchester look at each other. "Shall we turn them in to the authorities?" she asks. "Or is the mere threat of our wrath enough, do you think?"

"I say, if they do this again, we wipe the floor with them, then we turn them in. But considering that they just got their asses handed to them four against two, we can let 'em stew in their own humiliation for a while." He crouches and pulls McNair to a sitting position. "You hear that, asswipe? I really don't care who your parents are or what house we're in."

Tonks drops down beside him. "And if you're angry about the small size of your knob and need to fight someone to make yourself feel better, try me and I guarantee I'll give you something worse to think about. You won't walk for a week when I'm finished with you." She stands and collects their four wands from where they fell in the grass, then looks at Dean. "Let's go. I'll drop these, and we can lift the spells once we're a little farther away."

"I have a better idea. Give 'em to me, and I'll leave 'em in the girls' bathroom in Slytherin House."

Tonks looks at him with a raised eyebrow. "Do I even want to know how you're going to get inside the girls' bathroom?"

"I'm not. I'll give these to Sam, and he'll give 'em to one of the forty or so girls in his harem."

Tonks laughs. "Your brother's how old, thirteen? And he has a harem already?"

"He doesn't know it yet; he just thinks he has all these girls who hang out with him all the time. He doesn't realize that in a year or two, he's going to grow about a foot taller and lose the baby fat, and then he'll **really** have a harem."

Tonks can't disagree; it's true. Sam Winchester, with his rare but brilliant smile and, from what the Hufflepuff third-years report, utterly un-Slytherin-like demeanor (Tonks can't help wondering what he's got beneath the shy, intelligent surface), has managed to effortlessly charm students and teachers alike. His brother is no less charming, but in an entirely different way. She says to Dean, serious now, "You realize that those four are going to find ways to get some back from you."

Dean shrugs. "They can try. Oh, yeah, before we forget—" He turns. "Finite incantatem." From the distance, Tonks can see Avery start to wake up; McNair, meanwhile, doesn't rise—she suspects he's still recovering from Dean's kick. Jugson and Gibbon find their feet and make an abortive start in Tonks and Dean's direction; he holds up the wands, and then they seem to remember that now there are even numbers and their opponents are armed besides. They busy themselves with their fallen comrades.

"They're in your house," Tonks goes on. "I wouldn't put it past any of them to do something while you're sleeping, for example."

"Please. I've been setting wards since I was five. None of them are getting at me—or at Sam either, for that matter."

"Since you were _five_?"

"Who are those people who go after dark wizards—like your police, I guess, or maybe your FBI?"

Startled by the apparent non sequitur, Tonks says, "You mean the Aurors?"

"Right, them. My dad was like that, except not a wizard and he didn't get paid. He raised Sam and me to do that, too. We had to keep out a lot worse than the four of them."

"If you're sure," Tonks says. "But still, be careful. Those four were raised by people whom it was the Aurors' responsibility to bring to justice."

"Then it'll be good practice." Dean grins at her, and with a start, she realizes that it's genuine. He's really not intimidated. "That's kind of what I want to do."

"Become an Auror?"

"Maybe not exactly, since I'm so damn behind here and I know you have to pass a lot of exams for that, but—something like that. Going after evil people, or evil whatever. People do it on their own—my dad did."

"You should talk to Dumbledore or McGonagall. Or Snape, I suppose, since he's your Head of House, if you can bring yourself to go near the great unwashed. You do have to take several NEWTs, but with tutoring you could catch up much more quickly. I want to be one, too," she confesses.

"You? Really?"

"What? Is it because I'm a girl, or because my hair is pink?"

"Neither. God. Some of the woman hunters we know...knew.... Anyway. I was going to say that you don't seem like the type for it, but actually that's not true—you charged into that fight."

It's her turn to shrug. "I don't like bullies. Dark wizards are just bullies on a larger level. My mum doesn't want me to do it—says it's too dangerous—but my dad's all for it. And secretly I think she'd be proud if I did."

They're at the Entrance Hall now. Hufflepuff and Slytherin are both underground, but in different directions. "If I know Sam," Dean says, "he's in the common room studying. I should give these to him before any of those morons catch up with us."

Tonks should go study. She knows that. But she...doesn't want to.

"Uh," she says, "thanks for, you know, barging into that. I'll take on four against one, but I really prefer not to."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Right," she says, squaring her shoulders. "I'll see you." She starts to turn towards the door leading to Hufflepuff House.

"Wait," she hears Dean say, and turns. He's staring at the floor and looking quite unlike the sauntering, leather-clad almost-man she first saw in the Great Hall. He mumbles something unintelligible.

"Sorry?" Tonks says.

He's blushing! Tonks is about to ask him if he's alright when he takes a breath and says, only slightly more comprehensibly, "So I hear people are going into town this weekend."

"Right, the Hogsmeade trip." She signed up for it with her friends, as usual.

"Doyouwanttogo."

It takes her a moment to interpret that. Is he... "Are you asking me out on a date?" Then she realizes what she's just said, and promptly prays for the flagstones to open up so that she might pitch herself into the resulting chasm. "I mean, um, I'm sure that you're not. Right. Yes."

He's looking up now—and smiling, the git. "That's how you guys do it here, right? Like, if a guy asks a girl out, they go to Hogsmeade together?"

"Right," she says. "It's the only option, really."

"OK. So I am. Do you want to go or not?"

*************

 

At breakfast on Thursday, Araminta tells them all that four Slytherins are in the infirmary with especially disgusting gastrointestinal disorders that mysteriously have not been passed to anyone else. At supper, she has more details: names, and the additional fact that they'd all tried to ambush Dean Winchester while he was asleep. It seems he wasn't joking about his ability to set wards.

At breakfast on Friday, Tonks steels herself and asks her friends if they'll forgive her for deserting them on the trip tomorrow.

"Don't tell me you're staying back to study, Tonks!" Araminta exclaims. "That's not on at all!"

"No. I'm, er, I'm going. Just...someone asked me to go with him, and I never wanted to be one of those girls to desert her friends, but there are five of you and you won't miss me, right?"

Prudence raises her eyebrows. "Someone asked you to go with him, did he?"

"Yes," Tonks says, looking resolutely at her eggs.

"If you're going to desert us for some boy," Pippa says, "you might at least do us the courtesy of telling us who asked you and when precisely this asking occurred."

"TuesdayDeanWinchester," Tonks says as quickly as possible.

It's useless. Araminta still shrieks. Tonks prays to the flagstones again. Yet again, they don't respond.

Eyebrows arching over the rim of her teacup, Eugenie says, "You were asked to Hogsmeade three days ago by the boy half the campus—and not just the girls—would like to shag—"

"Eugenie!" Araminta exclaims, but Eugenie is undeterred.

"As I was saying, this took place three days ago, and you are only just informing us now?"

"I despise you all," Tonks informs them.

Tamesis yawns. She's never fully awake before noon, no matter how much tea she consumes and how much the others prod her. She's probably taken in only the last few sentences of the conversation. "We forgive you," she says. "As long as you report back with full details."

*************

 

On Saturday morning, after breakfast, they go to Hogsmeade.

Sam Winchester, true to his brother's word, is surrounded by a full complement of chattering girls. They head straight for Honeydukes, and Dean looks as though he's forcibly holding himself back from following. Impulsively, Tonks puts her hand on Dean's arm, and he starts. "He'll be fine," Tonks says. "If my count is correct, he's got six Slytherins, four Gryffindors, three Ravenclaws, and two Hufflepuffs with him. Your brother has achieved what hundreds of years of adult efforts haven't been able to: uniting the houses. No one's getting through that army."

"I know," Dean says. "I know, I know, I know. And if they do, Sam will hex them into next week, because he _can_. I'm just—I'm not used to leaving him on his own."

"The fact that you cheated during Sorting to get placed in his house is testament to that," Tonks says wryly. "I thought Dumbledore's eyebrows were going to levitate off his head." She sees Araminta and Eugenie pass them, behind Dean, followed by Pippa, Prudence, and Tamesis. Eugenie makes a gesture of shockingly obscene implications; Tamesis grins and gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Tonks fixes her attention on Dean. She'll worry later about throttling Eugenie. "Anyroad, where do you want to go?"

"I don't really know what's here," Dean says.

Tonks thinks for a moment. "You'd like Zonko's. It's the joke shop. We could go there, and maybe to Honeydukes—that's the sweet shop—and then have something to drink."

Dean is agreeable to that, and they spend nearly an hour in Zonko's. Tonks convinces him not to torment his brother with Hiccup Sweets, but he can't be talked out of a Fanged Frisbee. ("This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!") Sam and his entourage come in just as Tonks and Dean are leaving. Sam looks happy, ears and cheeks pinkened by the brisk autumn day, and Dean's face betrays relief, masked quickly. As they pass, he reaches through the wall of girls to ruffle Sam's hair, laughing at the resulting squawk.

Tonks thinks that entrants to heaven, whether it's filled with choirs of angels or scores of willing virgins per their preference, may not be as overwhelmed by ecstasy as Dean Winchester upon entering Honeydukes.

"Oh. My. God."

Dean (yet again) must be talked out of the Cockroach Clusters, and he's bizarrely fascinated by the blood-flavored lollipops. "You're quite possibly unhinged," Tonks tells him, before remembering that you're not supposed to insult the boy with whom you're on a date. He just grins at her, though, and then sees a shelf of exploding bon-bons.

"Holy sh—um, cow, exploding candy?! I have to try that!"

"I recommend trying it outside—not in an enclosed space."

"Sounds like you speak from experience."

"I may or may not have opened a box of them in my mum's sitting room. The mark on the ceiling may or may not still be there."

They end up with a mountain of candy—Tonks stocks up on Chocoballs, Chocolate Frogs, and sugar quills, as well as the fudge made by Mrs. Flume, some nougat, some toffee, and a great many chocolates. Dean buys about half the shop. ("Dude! Candy that makes you breathe fire!")

"So," Dean says once they're outside, "where can we go to eat all of this?"

"If we go to Madame Puddifoot's, neither of us will ever hear the end of it." Dean looks at her quizzically, and Tonks says, "Just trust me on this. The Hog's Head is rather dodgy, plus we didn't bring glasses—and anyway, if this is a date, you are _not_ taking me to the Hog's Head. So that leaves the Three Broomsticks."

Tonks's friends, of course, are already there, in a booth near the front—she waves, and then glares at Eugenie, who makes another phenomenally vulgar gesture when Dean's back is turned. They're able to find their own booth, tucked into a corner near the back. Tonks is about to go to the bar for a butterbeer, but Dean says, "Date, remember? Sit."

"Arf."

He rolls his eyes. "What do you want?"

"Butterbeer. The mulled mead is also good, if you want something less sweet."

He's back in a few minutes, with butterbeer for her and the mead for himself. They spread their takings on the table, sampling from each other's, and Tonks laughs when Dean looks a little stunned after eating a pinkish Every Flavor Bean. "I could swear that tasted like...bacon."

"It probably did. Be careful with those. I've been off them ever since getting a tripe-flavored one when I was nine."

They stay there through the afternoon, warm, laughing, and full of sweets. Tonks's friends come over on their way out; gritting her teeth and saying a prayer, Tonks introduces them to Dean, but they all (even Eugenie) behave themselves admirably. Tonks finds out a few more details about Dean's family: He and Sam moved to London last spring, after their father's death ("hunting accident," Dean says, and Tonks can only imagine what he must have been hunting), to live with their mother's parents, whom they'd never met. "I guess there was a big falling-out when my mom married my dad—she went to the U.S. on vacation when she was like nineteen and just never came back, it sounds like. So there's this whole side of my family that I didn't even know existed."

"There's a similar situation in my family, too," Tonks says, and explains the great scandal of Andromeda Black marrying Ted Tonks. "But my mother's family—well, I don't think it's any great loss, not knowing them. One of her sisters is in prison for—" Tonks breaks off, not wanting Dean to think that she might be anything like Aunt Bellatrix. "For a lot of bad things," she finishes lamely, but he doesn't press. "And her other sister is married to this tremendous arsehole who should be in prison but isn't, purely because of his money and family connections. They have a son, but I've never met him; he's several years younger than I am."

"My grandparents aren't anything like that," Dean says. "Just kind of...stuffy. They have all these old things in their house that you're not supposed to touch."

"Oh, my father's mother, too. She covers her sitting-room furniture with plastic!"

They're dividing a Pumpkin Pasty to share when a shadow sweeps over the table. Tonks and Dean look up at the same time to see Professor and Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, impressive in her black robes—she's among the staff who chaperoned the trip. "Good afternoon, Winchester, Tonks. No, don't get up—I'll be only a moment. It's my understanding that some...unofficial law enforcement took place earlier this week."

Dean and Tonks simultaneously turn their stares to the tabletop.

Professor McGonagall goes on, "While I am sure that young Smithson appreciated the intervention—and intervening was certainly the proper thing with no adults about—it is nevertheless the job of the faculty and administration, and not the students, to carry out disciplinary actions."

Dean and Tonks continue staring at the table.

"May I have your word that any further incidents will be reported according to school rules—not to mention common sense?"

"Yes, Professor," they say as one.

"Winchester, the headmaster and I would like to meet with you Monday. You do not have any free periods that day, correct?"

"Um, yes, ma'am, that's correct."

"Then we will meet after your last class, before supper. I will expect you at the headmaster's office."

Dean looks a little bit perplexed, but says, "Yes, ma'am."

"Good. We will be returning to campus in fifteen minutes, so you should begin to gather your things."

When she's out of earshot, Dean says, "I'm not sure if I'm in trouble or not."

"Oh, you're not. You'd know. Did you ask her about becoming an Auror?"

"No, I asked Flitwick. Dumbledore seems alright but he still kind of weirds me out, McGonagall's freaking scary, and Snape practically gets steam coming out of his ears every time he looks at me lately. I guess Flitwick must have talked to her, though."

They redivide their sweets. Tonks struggles into her jumper—she's forever getting enmeshed in the thing, and if Dean laughs, she'll kill him—and Dean shrugs on his jacket. It's only when they're outside, waiting for the stragglers to catch up as the chaperons do the head count, that Tonks feels his fingers interlace with hers.

**NOTE: Section II has a sequel, [So Quite New a Thing](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/47218.html#cutid1), set a few months later.**

### 

III

 

It's early afternoon, but she's knocking off work—she's sniffly and feeling the beginnings of a sore throat, and if she can manage a few hours' rest before the others get home, she should be able to avoid the grippe.

She moved into Grimmauld Place in early October, about six weeks ago. With Order business, she was there most nights, and after a series of increasingly unsubtle hints from Sirius about how much he'd like the company, she gave up her flat—the rent was astronomical anyway—and moved into one of the enormous second-floor bedrooms. Sirius's bedroom is just down the corridor, which helps dispel some of the house's overwhelming miasma of creepiness, and Remus is upstairs, as are Molly and Arthur when they come into the city. She misses the light and air of her flat in Kentish Town, but her Gringotts vault has become significantly fuller in just the short amount of time since her move.

Also, she sees Remus every day.

She rather hopes he'll be home when she gets there. She's not up to a lengthy conversation or a chess game, but it's a nice fantasy that he might make her some tea.

The house doesn't have a Floo connection, and because of the wards, she can't Apparate inside. So she goes to the designated Apparition Area just outside the Atrium—one also can't Apparate in and out of Ministry headquarters except to and from this very specific space—and pops over, literally, to the front stoop of the house. She taps her wand on the front door and goes inside as quietly as possible, walking with tiny, slow steps so as not to trip over anything and set off Mrs. Black or any of the other portraits.

The house is dark, quiet—Sirius must be upstairs, or perhaps down in the kitchen. The kitchen is the only part of the house Tonks actively likes—the battered kitchen table and worktops are comforting, somehow, human in a way that the rest of the house isn't. Which is ironic, as, until Sirius's occupation of the house, the kitchen was used only by the house elves. She's quiet on the stairs—the portraits are still within earshot, and there's something about the rows of house elf heads that makes her want to tiptoe by them as inconspicuously as possible.

She really does miss her flat sometimes.

She crosses the basement landing and goes through the door to the kitchen.

Remus is home.

So is Sirius.

And Remus is sitting on that battered kitchen table, and Sirius is standing in front of him, and Sirius's hands are in Remus's hair, and they're kissing in a way that Tonks hasn't kissed anyone in longer than she can think.

Their eyes are closed; they're wrapped up in each other; they don't see her. She prays that, for once, her dreadful clumsiness will stay away, and she'll be able to get away and out of the house without anyone's being the wiser.

She edges back out of the kitchen and then up the stairs—and her prayers are partially answered, because she gets that far and then knocks over that wretched umbrella stand. Mrs. Black starts to scream, and the rest of the portraits immediately join in, and Tonks bolts out the front door and Apparates as quickly as she can to the first place she can think of that isn't the Ministry. A second later, she's standing in her favorite café in Diagon Alley. She has a couple of Galleons with her, a few Sickles, and for a moment she considers going over to Gringotts, withdrawing more from her vault, and just taking a room at the Leaky Cauldron for the night.

Was this their first time? Or has this been happening under her nose—on the other side of her wall—and in the more-than-month that she's been living at Grimmauld Place, she's been too dense to notice?

No, she's not going to stay at the Leaky Cauldron. That's daft. But neither is she going to stand here like a flobberworm. She orders an Earl Grey tea with firewhiskey in, and sits at one of the side tables. It's a strange enough time, and awful enough out—a typical cold, wet, windy November day in London—that the place is almost empty. She puts her head in her hands. She feels miserable. She is miserable. Merlin, has everyone known what's between Remus and Sirius, and no one bothered to tell her? Did everyone assume she already knew? Or has she been so dreadfully starry-eyed over Remus that, out of misguided kindness, no one said anything?

She hopes it's not that. She'll never been able to look anyone in the Order in the eye again. How pathetic they must think her. In love with a man nearly old enough to be her father, and meanwhile he's taken by someone who perhaps should have been obvious to her all along.

She sniffles, and she's not sure whether it's illness or tears.

She feels a hand on her shoulder, and starts, wand out and pointed at the person's chest—

It's Bill Weasley.

Oh, perfect.

She puts down her wand. "Wotcher, Bill."

"Hello, Tonks. It _is_ you. I wasn't sure."

"The hair wasn't enough of a clue?"

"Well, since you've got it brown today, you look different." He smiles tentatively. "But no one else wears enormous boots with sequins on."

Her pink sequined Doc Martens. She picked them out to match her favorite hair color.

Wait.

"My hair's brown?" She picks up a strand, pulls it down in front of her eyes. Bill isn't lying. Her hair is a boring, mousy shade she hasn't seen in years. "Salazar's stones." She concentrates—and it's difficult, much more difficult than usual, but she does it—and forces her hair back to the pink she prefers. "Is this better?"

"Immensely. Are you sure you're alright? You sound like you've got the lurgy."

"I left work early to go home and sleep, try to stave it off. What are you doing out of Gringotts, anyway?"

"I was just going to take a break and have a quick cuppa. May I join you?"

"If you like. I promise I won't breathe on you."

Bill goes up to order, returns with a full pot of tea and a plate of scones. "If you're sick," he says, "you might not be hungry, but I have a theory that scones can cure nearly anything." There's jam, too, and cream.

Tonks takes what looks like a currant scone, slathers it with a truly appalling amount of jam and a slightly more moderate—but only slightly—amount of cream, and takes a bite. Bill's right: It really is curative.

"Are you just not feeling well," Bill asks, "or is something wrong?"

She shakes her head. "Nothing. I'm just a great gormless mong. I'll recover. Tell me about the goblins."

He does, and they sit for a while, talking about goblins and Egypt and dragons and nothing in particular. It's only when she's eaten the last bite of it that Tonks realizes Bill has fed her another scone, and she wonders whether this comes from being the oldest of so many children—whether caretaking becomes an instinct as deeply laid as breathing.

She's drooping after another cup of tea, and Bill says gently, "Come, Tonks, let's get you back to Grimmauld Place. If you're not up to Apparating, I can take you by Side-along."

"No! I mean, not Grimmauld Place. I really...I can't go back there today. Please. I'll just stay here."

In her fit, she's knocked over her teacup, but luckily it's empty. Bill rights it and says, unruffled, "The Burrow, then. Merlin knows we have the space, and Mum'll be delighted to see you. And she'll be happy to have something non-life-threatening to make a fuss about. She likes that."

"It's alright, really. I don't want to put your family out."

"Tonks, you've met my family. And I'm the only one living at home now—as Charlie and the twins so like to remind me—so, truly, we have room."

"If you're sure your parents won't mind."

"Don't be daft, Tonks. Now let's get you home to bed."

She yawns. "What would Fleur think of your taking strange pink-haired girls home to bed?"

"Not that I would mind, but hadn't we best go out first?"

She can't have heard that right.

Except that Bill—kind, mannerly Bill, diplomatic and respectful even with his long hair and dragon-tooth earring—is staring at her with a look of utter horror on his face. "Bloody hell, I just said that out loud, didn't I?"

Tonks nods.

"You know," he says conversationally, "if lightning were to strike me dead now, that would really not be a problem."

Despite the day and her exhaustion and the fact that she feels like walking death, she laughs. "I would be sad if that were to happen. But in all seriousness, Bill, what about Fleur?"

He rubs his eyes. "The American term, I believe, is jailbait."

Tonks translates the idiom in her head, and snorts.

"Which isn't true, actually—she's old enough to work at Gringotts—but she's still far too young, and far too stuck-up, for that matter."

"She's part _Veela_."

"Well, yes. I'm not blind." He shrugs. "I'd push her towards Percy, since he's closer to her age, but. Bad idea all around."

"Oh." Tonks digests this. "Fleur and Percy would possibly be a match made in hell." After another pause, she adds, "Can we start with supper first? When I feel less abysmal?"

"That would be good." He has a nice smile. "I can't take off the rest of the afternoon," he says, "but I can take off long enough to get you settled at the Burrow. Will you be alright for a few minutes while I tell my boss and find some Floo powder?"

"I'll be fine," Tonks says. "I'll just sit and try not to knock anything else over."

He's gone only a few minutes. She leans against him when they step into the fireplace. His arms are strong, gentle, and certain.

### 

IV

 

Bollocks to him, she chants to herself. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks to him. And now he's buggered off to Romania—Romania!—without even bothering to say good-bye, and it's all well and good that Dumbledore may want a spy, but Remus went a little too readily for her to believe that was his only motivation. Romania! And she's been going about with drab hair and big mopey eyes, and generally looking the part of some girl out of a terrible novel who's shortly going to throw herself from a cliff or the battlements or something dramatic, and if Tonks is going to engage in some drama, she'll make it more interesting than that. She has a few days before reporting to Hogwarts, and she intends to use them. Which is why she's standing in front of her mirror selecting a hair color, and she has a Portkey lying on her bed.

And if the moon happens to be full tonight, that's coincidence. Purely.

Too old, too poor, her arse. Look at Bill and Fleur, for Godric's sake. The spread of years between herself and Remus may be greater, but Tonks is in her twenties, an Auror; she risks her life every day and she's right well old enough to know what and whom she wants. And too poor. As if she cares about that. She earns a good salary, more than enough to keep herself and another person comfortable, and she understands that he doesn't want her to support him, but he'll find work, and if she earns the higher amount, what does that matter these days? Times have changed; women do things other than stay home and raise their families, and often they make more than their men.

And she bloody well knows he's a werewolf, and she bloody well doesn't care, and if he doesn't love her back, he should have the stones to say so—she, after all, had the stones to tell him how she felt, and she doesn't even _have_ stones. And if he does love her back, then what's the bleeding problem? People call her chameleon and shapeshifter behind her back, imply that she was only accepted into the Aurors because of her Metamorphmagus gifts—sod that. They can sod that for the queen's knickers. Does she look as though she pays attention what other people think?

And of course she knows about Sirius. She's clumsy, not stupid. Why in the name of Merlin's hairy arse should she care about that? It's not as though she's limited herself to men her whole life. It's not as though she expects Remus to come to her a virgin; she certainly isn't one. She's glad that he loved someone that much, that someone loved him in return, and she misses Sirius every day, and yet she loves Remus all the same, and yes, it's confusing, but life is confusing and isn't Remus used to that already?

She's not going to do this in London, for obvious reasons. Not Paris—her French is terrible. Same with Berlin and her German. She's been to New York a few times—a friend from Hogwarts moved there after they finished school—but right now she wants something new, somewhere she's never been. She knows that there's a large wizarding community in San Francisco, and Bill Weasley, who's travelled all over for his job at Gringotts, was able to tell her some places to go.

He'd looked at her with odd sympathy, and she'd wanted to put her fist through his face, but she didn't, because he's Bill and he's kind and he's the last person on Earth to look down on anyone. It's just that she's looking down at herself right now, and it's hard to believe that everyone else isn't, either.

She settles on a deep crimson for her hair, to match the blood-red of the boots she's wearing. Her skirt is tight, black, just barely clears her arse. (One advantage of her odd set of gifts: If she's eaten a few too many chocolates over the past weeks, no one has to be the wiser from looking at her.) She's wearing fishnets, a small strappy top that perfectly sets off her pale skin. (That, she doesn't care to modify.) If Remus can't appreciate the fact that he could have this in bed—or on the kitchen table, or on the sitting-room floor, or in the shower, or against the wall in the corridor, she's flexible that way—with him every night, then even yet more bollocks to him. There'll be someone in San Francisco who can, and Tonks plans to find him or her this very night.

She darkens the color of her lips to better complement this hair color. Ah, good—perfect against her pale complexion and dark eyes. (She doesn't alter those, either.) At the last, almost as an afterthought, she picks a necklace out of her jewelry box and fastens it, little more than a gleaming length of chain, around her neck.

Five minutes later, she's in California.

*****************

 

She loses herself in the sea of people, in the thunder of bass. She's not an especially good dancer—too clumsy—but she can follow a beat, more or less, and when everyone's moving to the same rhythm, and there aren't any unlucky inanimate objects for her to knock over, she can follow along, get caught up in it. Which she does, as the music, pulsing in deep waves from the speakers, and the rapper's voice, velvety and fierce, carry her along.

She's not sure how long she stays there. She dances with several men, more than one woman—she doesn't approach them, but they come to her, and she doesn't think, just moves with them, a creature of heat but no particular urgency, enjoying the hardness of the men's bodies, chests under her hands, the beauty of the women's, her fingers curved in the small of their backs.

There's no one here for her, but that's alright—she's happy just to dance. Which she does, stopping only to drink some water, then rejoining the human ocean on the dance floor, hundreds of people merged into a single hedonistic organism.

Then, it seems, they change DJs, because the music becomes a grating techno, all beat but no heart, and she has to flee before her ears start bleeding. Really, why do people listen to this?

Outside, she stretches, enjoys the cool Pacific air on her sweaty skin. She consults her list again. The next place isn't far, less than a mile, and her map shows a shortcut. As she heads in that direction, the neighborhood gets dodgy—not many people about except for a few lone prostitutes—but Tonks, armed with wand and skill, isn't afraid.

She's walking, keeping an eye out for unsavory individuals but unworried, singing a Weird Sisters song under her breath. The dancing did her good; the fresh air is welcome in her lungs; and she'll be ready for more when she arrives at the next place.

It's then that she sees the woman running, and hears the snarl.

She has her wand out and the "Petrificus!" shouted before she even thinks consciously about it. But she's not the only person there, and the bullets hit the werewolf right as her spell does.

She Apparates over—faster than running—but it's too late. The prostitute bolts; Tonks crouches down by the wounded man and ends the spell silently. She knows only the most basic healing magic; she has no idea what to do about multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. He's dying. She has her Portkey; she could bring him to her flat, and then Apparate to St. Mungo's. Maybe they'll know what to do.

The man goes still and silent before she can do any of that.

She turns to look at the gunman, who has crouched down beside her. "Haven't you ever heard of Wolfsbane, you bloody fucking arsehole?" It's only as she says it that she realizes she's crying. "That was a person, and you—you shot him like—like an animal, and all he needed was a Stupefying charm and a locked room, you worthless cunt!" With shaking hands, she closes the man's eyes.

"Lady, I don't know who you are and I can barely understand what you're saying, but why don't you just take a second and calm down—"

Tonks stands up. "I'm a witch"—she does a silent Lumos, and a slender, thin light shines from the tip of her wand—"and a good one"—she does another Petrificus, then reaches down and takes the gun from the man's hand—"and you just committed murder." She undoes the Petrificus and looks the man in the eyes.

He nods towards the gun. "Do you even know how to use that?"

"No idea. But I know how to use this"—she keeps her wand trained on him—"and believe me when I say that I can kill you with it and will not hesitate to do so." The tears are drying on her face; her voice is steady.

The man starts, "That was a werewolf—"

"Oh, what was your first clue!"

"And he was killing people!"

"Haven't you ever heard of Wolfsbane!"

The man shakes his head.

"It's a potion," Tonks says, "developed a little over three years ago. The afflicted person drinks it when the moon is almost full, and rather than becoming a were-creature, they take the physical form of a wolf, but they keep their mind. My...friend who takes it locks himself in his flat during that time, and we bring him raw minced meat and steaks and make sure he has enough water—he won't let us stay with him—and then he becomes human again when the moon wanes." Crikey, she's crying again. She fights it back and glares up at the man she's disarmed.

"Wait a minute," he says. "You're telling me that there's something people can drink, and it just means they turn into an animal—but with a human brain—for a couple of days, and that's the end of it?"

"Exactly."

"Oh Jesus Christ." Stricken, he looks down at the body. "Why didn't Dad ever hear about that?"

"Are you a Muggle? Sorry, I mean, are you a wizard? Do you have magical ability?"

"Fuck no. That's Sam's gig, not mine."

"Did your father, or either of your parents?"

"Not to the best of my knowledge."

"Do you know anyone who does?"

"We know a couple of psychics, if that counts."

"You haven't heard of it," Tonks says, "because it was invented by wizards in England, and unless you are one, you won't know anything about them. Wolfsbane's a recent invention, but I can assure you that it works, and it renders cold-blooded murder quite unnecessary."

"My brother and I are trying to find a cure for a girl who got bitten," the man says slowly. "My dad knew a lot about this kind of shit, and I know almost as much, and the only thing we ever heard was that if you kill the werewolf who bit the person, it kills the bloodline and cures the condition in every person that werewolf bit."

Tonks blinks. "Well, that's one I never heard. Though I wouldn't mind trying it out on Fenrir Greyback."

"So you're saying you think you have a cure for this girl?"

"I don't think so; I know so. She might have to come to England, though. Where is she?"

The man sighs. "Not far from here. We can walk."

"Alright." She looks down at the dead man. The image of Remus's face superimposes itself for a moment over the dead man's own, and Tonks covers her mouth, takes several breaths.

"Never seen a corpse before?"

She looks up and says as precisely as she can, "I'm in love with a man who was bitten as a child. He's the smartest person I've ever met, as well as the kindest, and I have nightmares about something like this happening to him." She takes another breath, steadies herself. "I'll burn the body, unless you have a better idea."

It's the man's turn to blink. "It's a little wet for that."

She shakes her head, takes out her wand again. "Rest in peace," she whispers. "Incendio."

### 

V

 

She lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Section II has a sequel, [So Quite New a Thing](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/47218.html#cutid1), set a few months later.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
> I am usually the world's slowest writer, but this fic kind of ate my brain, and I finished it in three days. If you want something more cheerful after all the angst, I have [this little snippet](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/12177.html) from part IV that I wasn't able to use: I wrote it, then rewatched "Heart" and realized I'd remembered the episode wrong and this couldn't happen, but I liked it too much to just delete it. It's G-rated, Dean/Tonks-ish.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Outtake from "The Hero of My Own Life"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/49633) by [azephirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin)
  * [All of a Sudden, These Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/50195) by [azephirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin)




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